I'm kinda confused about how the west converged on growth-as-effort (via pain, shame-directed-self-change, striving, hustling)
rather than growth-as-ease, bc it's the nature of all living things to grow. 🌿
u wouldn't yell at a flowerbud to get it to blossom...?
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there's a lot of barely sublimated christianity in the western memeplex, people just don't believe that they deserve good things. effort is how you demonstrate your virtue. also a big cross-pollination with being a worker under capitalism
for sure!
i'm now imagining alternatives, maybe some impro-esque or daoist model of growth as tapping more into spontaneity
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beep boop if your family has 1000 years of Christian lineage & 50 years of atheism you're still culturally Christian
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for me i guess i think a lot in terms of obstructions to spotaneity. like it's the nature of things to grow *and* a flower can't grow if it's trapped under concrete or isn't getting sunlight or water or etc. etc.
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Yep. The USA is a direct memetic descendent of John Calvin. We have him to thank for "Protestant work ethic", the sense of leisure as sin, feeling guilty for pleasure, constant fear of damnation, etc.
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On the other hand pre-Protestant Christian tradition also contains Thomas Aquinas whose main ethical innovation seems to have been modifying Aristotelian virtue ethics to center around love, leisurely reception of grace, etc 😇
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"Effort = virtue" is a toxic meme within Christian teaching which spits in the face of the "by [God's] grace we are saved" doctrine. It's at odds with other doctrine ~ "conversion animates to righteous action".
This being warped into a yoke of the capitalists is another matter
But the Christian message is all about the fact that one can receive the most wonderful things in life without effort. One does not deserve them, but also one does not have to. The whole idea of divine grace is about this.
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What you stated is to put it simply factually incorrect and the direct opposite of the Gospel. I will not die on this hill, but I can stand on it confidently for as long as you want me to.
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The Bible has a lot of resources against this: grace, faith as trust, prayer as dependence on God, Sabbath as a time of rest, contentment as a virtue, selfish ambition and greed as sins, etc. But too much cherry-picking goes on
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